NationStates Jolt Archive

OOC: This is just to give some idea of what life is like in my nation.

Eduardo Gomez wiped sweat from his forehead and took a drink from his canteen. The luke-warm water tasted of rust and chemicals, but it was hot out, and he had so much work to do... there was always work to do.

The field was dusty - it hadn't rained in weeks, months really, and the soil was cracked and dry, little particles of dirt blowing away with every breeze, adding to the choking dust that got in everywhere and choked those unfortunate enough to breath it in.

He kicked at the tired mule, whispering encouragement as it trudged forward and pulled the wooden plow behind it. The plow was made entierly of wood, and it took all day to do the little field that Eduardo relied upon to support his family.

He heard a horse neigh, and glanced up towards the dirt road that bordered on the field - it was one of the sons of the boss, the land owner who took rent on his field and his house. He rode a horse, and wore fine clothes and leather boots, and he carried a revolver on his belt that shone with silver, like his spurs. Eduardo was tired and wanted to finish - nothing more. He was tired and exhauted and miserable... he didn't want to notice the rich man on his horse, but he was waiting on the road, watching as he worked.

Eduardo took off his ragged straw hat and gave the rich man a bow. The horseman didn't seem to acknowledge his existence, but he rode on. It didn't pay to antagonize the wealthy - if you did, you'd find yourself and your entire family on the road.

The rest of the day, all its brutal hot and miserable labor, passed without event. The field was plowed, and he trudged towards the little house he shared with his family. He'd been working since dawn, and as he brushed the mule down and gave it water and straw the sun was setting. His stomach rumbled - he hadn't had anything to eat since the morning, and even then it had been only a bit of soup made from cabbage and turnips, watery and foul.

He left the mule in the shed, and went in to his home. It was a shack, really, a flimsy construction of wood with a coating of dirty stucco that had been crumbling and grey when he'd been a child living here, and was now full of holes that let the wind and the dust in.

It was two rooms, no running water or electricity, no windows save for the holes in the walls. They did their cooking outside. He lived there with his mother, his wife and his daughter, who was less than a year old. He'd been one of three brothers, but one had died of a fever, and the other had been conscripted into the army and had never returned, although a letter had arrived for them a few years ago, something that had never happened before. It said that Corporal Gomez was dead, and had come with a two peso coin, the money for his dead brother. They'd had to have the priest read the letter - he was the only literate person in their village, save for the land owners, and they couldn't very well ask the bosses to read them the letter.

He was tired, and his mother and wife looked tired too - they were gaunt, their clothes like rags, their eyes dark, exhausted and miserable. Being a peasant was a hard life.

Dinner was boiled cabbage with potatoes. There wasn't enough of it, and it tasted foul. As foul as breakfast. He wished he was rich, as he ate, he wished that he was rich and could affoard to eat meat more than twice a year.

When they had eaten, they collapsed together, their exhaustion total. As he fell into the blackness of sleep, he realized that he hadn't spoken a single word all day. It was like he was an animal...

Josef Nicolas smilled as he nibbled at a bit of papaya on his fork. The morning was hot, and he was a little worried - if it didn't rain soon, the crops might fail, and if the crops failed, then his family would lose the money they had spent on seeds for their peasants, and that would not be good.

It was too hot to stay indoors, he decided as he finished his coffee - even with the expensive air conditioner his father had had imported from somewhere or other could do little against weather this extreme, and the stone construction of the Great House seemed only to make the situation worse. It seemed like a good idea to go for a ride.

Yes, he decided as he rose and left the dishes for the servants - it was a good idea to go for a ride. He wondered about whether to take a rifle and go hunting, but he decided against the idea. He'd just take a pistol, because it wouldn't do for the son of a wealthy land owner to go unarmed amoung the peasants. The ones in their estate were fairly tame, but you never could tell. His father always reminded him that all peasants were lazy thieving idiots who always spent all their money on getting drunk.

When he'd had his horse sadled, he set out - the dirt road leading to the nearest village, and then on towards the capital seemed as good a path as any, and he rode. He passed empty fields, dust clouds hanging overhead. The entire world seemed flat and empty - every now and then there was a little peasant hut, ragged and flimsy, each looking like some sort of ruin even when it was still in use. Disgusting, really, the whole lot of them, ragged scarecrows...

He saw only one peasant at work - he was plowing his field with a mule, sending up even more dust. He must be crazy, Josef thought as he watched him work. It was too dry to plow. He watched the peasant work for a few minutes, until he took off his cap and bowed, a proper gesture of respect for ones betters. Once he had had that gesture of respect, he rode off. It was a hot day, but he felt sure he'd find some amusement. He had to be back for lunch, of course, but it didn't really matter - he enjoyed little more than riding.

Yes, he decided as he rode on, even if this little backwater province lacked the excitement of the capital, it was still good to come out here for the holidays, so that he could see his father and ride.

King Fernando the Third of the House of de Juarez stood in front of the huge window in his study, hands held together behind his straight back, crisp white dress uniform perfect in every detail, looking out at the city bellow. He felt... sad, he guessed. Depressed might be another word for it, or perhaps daunted. He was a man faced with a nearly impossible task, who knew that his task was neaerly impossible, and who had chosen to face it anyway. He was a nobleman, and he believed in the words his teachers had told him, about duty and honor and the connection between a nobleman and the commoners who worked for him. He believed all of those words, and he tried to live his life by them. Which was hard, because every time he looked at another person of his social class, he saw laziness and greed, things which they liked to claim were the exclusive province of the peasantry and the rising merchant classes. They were wrong, he'd long ago decided - if anything, there was more true nobility to be found amoung the tradesmen and laborers of the cities than amoung their so-called betters. They at least did not take it for granted that they would advance quickly within government service, to rapidly attain high office with no real work... but he deviated from the point of the matter. The nobility was corrupt, the governmental system was corrupt, the army was a joke, the treasury was empty and the balance of trade was an uncomfortable deficit... and, because of the same accident of birth that had made him a noble, he had it as his task in life to do whatever he could to fix the situation. He was the King, after all...

Sighing, he turned from the window and the view it affoded, of tin-roofed shacks and ragged lines of washing, of packed streets with more mules than cars and of rising clouds of wood smoke, and looked at the man sitting at the table.

He was a commoner, although a rather unique commoner - a general in a country where few commoners reached anything like that level of power and influence. He was the son of a butcher, and had something of a reputation amoung his comrades as a man to watch. Since they were mostly nobles, and he a commoner born in one of the worse parts of Juarez, San Josef's single large sea port, they mostly spoke of how he was a man to watch lest the criminal leanings of the lower classes show themselves and he knife you like he had that colonel... but Fernando knew the whole story. He knew it all, and he had found, after much soul searching, that he could not blame the general for his actions. To take justice into his own hands, to use a little steel blade to end a man's life... well, when one considered what that colonel had been up to, well, and the fact that since he was a de Norte and would therefore have avoided any punishment whatsoever, then the general's choice became clear and understandable. Still, the colonel had been a de Norte, and so his murderor had lost his commission and been imprisoned, and would have been hung had not the king intervened...

And that was the thing. He had intervened. Perhaps it was because he thought he saw someone like himself in the big burly soldier. Perhaps because he had felt like taking the law into his own hands often enough when faced with the corruption that was to be found in the nobility... and, perhaps because he admired the general for having gone and done what he had only thought about. Because the rule of law was important - before his reign, the kings had ruled by decree, and that had worked... had worked to make the nightmare situation of corruption and poverty that now persisted throughout the entire nation. It had only been when he took the throne that he had insisted on a constitution, and even then he had had to write it up himself to give it legitimacy. The nobles seemed to think it something of a joke - they thought of him as the sad little man who would be a president, who envied the richer nations their wealth... and, he admited, he did. He envied them their wealth, but even if San Josef had had that much wealth, he wouldn't have been happy. What he really envied was their justice, and how it all seemed so wonderful over there, where commoners were rich enough to not worry about starving... where the law applied to everyone equally. He wanted San Josef to be like that. Wanted it so much that it hurt.

He sighed again - so like his mind to wander when he had buissness at hand. His tutors had been infuriated by that habit, and had beaten him for it almost daily. But that was another matter altogether... he had now to return to the present.

As he sat at the other side of the table from the general, he picked up the sheaf of papers in front of him and flipped through them without speaking. He glanced over the words he had memorized, and made a show of furrowing his brow and rubbing his chin. He couldn't very well let the commoner know how thoroughly he had read up on that man's life, after all.

After that feigned moment of examination, he spoke:

"Well, Pablo Martinez, formerly General Martinez, I do not doubt you are wondering why I prevented you from hanging." the general nodded at this - he was interested. Smilling, he continued: "Well, I think I might as well tell you. You see, the thing is that I need either you or someone else very much like you." he paused, and the general spoke for the first time:

"Like me, Senor?" the king noted the inflection of the general's terse comment - he was not givnig the senor the proper tone to make it the formal title of respect it should have been, but that was okay - he found he was rather taken with his defiant general.

Answering the question, he continued:

"Look out the window in my study in El Palacio Real de San Josef, and you will see tin roofed shacks where the common people live. Look out of that same window, and you will see that mules and donkeys outnumber cars, and that the city out there, the capital, the Ciudad de la Plata, the city of the silver, is, by the standards of the rest of the world, a single massive slum." Now in full rhetorical flow, he continued:

"Three quarters of the entire population of this nation is still tied down under the archaic rules of a forgotten era, peasants and nothing else. All but owned by whichever land owner happens to hold their lease. The rest of the common people, the urban workers and the tradesmen... well, most are little better off - they might live in nicer shacks, they might own more animals and eat slightly better, but only the very wealthiest amoung them have electricity or running water in their homes." he paused again, catching his breath, before closing in on the point of the entire speach:

"It is not, as it might have been said, that they are lazy. They are not - they need to struggle just to get enough food to eat. It is that the wealth that their labor produces, the wealth of the nation, is being stolen by those who are already wealthy, by the nobles, who profit from this horrid situation. And who control the army." he said the last sentance as if it was an afterthought, which it was anything but. He might control the government, might technically give orders to the army, but the nobility provided officers. His reforms, therefore, persisted only on sufference, allowed to continue only as long as they were minor enough to be no threat whatsoever to the status quo. If he overstepped the limits they had in mind... well, kings had been replaced before.

The general seemed to understand what he was getting at, and spoke:

"Well, they do control the army, that is true..." it was a comment intended to provide a position from which the king could explain the use he had found for the common general, and it was used as such.

Without a word, the king tossed a little silver star onto the table, then asked:

"Do you remember how, in the old days, the king had his own army, the Royal Guard?" the general nodded, and seemed to be begining to understand what was what. The king continued:

"Well, I decided to reform that unit, and when I thought of the people I would like to have controlling it, no one seemed more suited to the task than you. Would you accept the rank of Brigadier General in the Royal Guard?" the general seemed to hesitate for a moment, but then he spoke:

"Alright. Brigadier General Martinez reporting." he picked up the star, and affixed it to his uniform jacket. He hadn't had a rank pin before the king had given him one, and he seemed to enjoy the act of pinning it on imensly. The king smilled. If things went well, perhaps soon his reforms might actually reach the point of having an effect...